As COVID funding ends, PCS makes nursing post adjustments

Pitt County Schools will move forward with two fewer nursing positions next year but largely maintained nurse staffing levels despite the expiration of pandemic relief funding, officials said.

Officials during a school board workshop last week discussed nursing posts and other adjustments needed after Pitt County Government finalized its appropriations to the school system in its 2024-25 budget.

School Health Program Manager Laurie Reed said that for the 2024-25 school year, 10 Pitt County Schools campuses will have a dedicated nurse not shared with another school. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds, which are due to expire in September, previously allowed 11 schools in the district to have a nurse on campus every day, compared to three schools before the pandemic.

In March, then-Director of Student Services Karen Harrington reported to the Board of Education that when staffed with 26 nurses, Pitt County Schools has a student-to-nurse ratio of 900:1, compared with an average ratio of 809:1 across the state. The student-to-nurse ratio was 1,200:1 before additional positions were added with ESSER funding.

Funding for local school nurses comes from a number of sources, including Pitt County’s Board of Commissioners and the state Department of Health and Human Services’ School Nurse Funding Initiative (SNFI). Nine, including a nurse manager, are paid for by ECU Health Medical Center.

Harrington told The Daily Reflector that as a result of one school nurse retiring at the end of the 2022-23 school year and another resigning during the 2023-24 school year, the school system ended the year with 24 school nurses and will begin the new school year in August with that same number.

The school system had requested about $750,000 from the county for 10 nursing positions it needed to maintain staffing at 26 nurses. The county agreed to provide $550,000 to pay for eight positions, including three that had been funded by ESSER.

Superintendent Ethan Lenker told school board members last week that the district also received partial funding to cover technology positions. The county agreed to provide $220,000, which would pay for three of the six requested positions.

Lenker told the board that commissioners approved full funding, $773, 313, for the requested 8% local supplement for teachers. But he said the school district would need to find ways to close funding gaps in other areas, including using about $1 million from special revenue to help with fixed facilities costs.

Also last week, the board agreed to spend about $1.9 million in remaining ESSER funding to pay for digital educational resources for the 2024-25 school year.

With the ESSER funds expiration looming, the board approved about $4.5 million in ESSER/capital funding transfers. Chief Finance Officer Michael Hardy said the transfers, which involve portions of two large HVAC projects, were necessary to avoid the risk of missing the ESSER spending deadline.

“We had a number of allowable costs in the current year that we could use to spend down some of those remaining ESSER funds,” he said. “The capital items wouldn’t be paid for until the new (fiscal) year. It might be into September. Knowing we had existing expenditures that were allowable, we went ahead and moved them to mitigate some of that risk.”

In other reports, Delilah Jackson, interim assistant superintendent of human resources, told the board that the school district had about 50 vacancies earlier this month. Several teacher assistant positions were open, she said, adding that exceptional children’s positions continued to be a high-needs area. Jackson said PCS is considering a number of options for filling classroom positions, including hiring some candidates through Teach for America.

Graduate success

Members of Pitt County Schools’ Class of 2024 received millions more in scholarships than 2023 graduates, the school district reported.

Beth Ulffers, PCS director of outreach and public relations, described the most recent scholarship offers as a record for the district.

“Our kids are getting scholarships; great things are happening for our students,” she said. “We have students who are going into the Air Force Academy, the Naval Academy. We had three Park Scholars (full-tuition scholarship for North Carolina State University).”

Graduating seniors at the district’s eight high schools received $25.6 million in scholarship offers, accepting $8.9 million in awards. This compares to $16.9 million in offers and $6.3 million in scholarships accepted in 2023. Some 380 of the district’s 1,681 graduates received scholarship offers, compared with 317 students last year.

The system also saw an increase in the number of graduates who earned the North Carolina Scholar designation. For 2024, there were 425 N.C. Scholars, compared with 401 in 2023. In a little less than a decade, the percentage of graduates designated as N.C. Scholars has increased from 20% to 28%.

North Carolina scholars must earn an unweighted grade point average of at least 3.50 and are required to complete four math, English, social studies and elective courses, three each of science courses and higher-level courses, two world language classes and a health and physical education class.